Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1338: The History of Mood Swings

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

In 1998, I came up with the idea of a more accessible trading card game. That game is called Mood Swings and goes on sale starting June 1 on MagicSecretLair.com. This podcast talks about my 28-year journey to get it made.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work. Okay, so today I'm very excited to be talking about the history of mood swings. So what is mood swings, you say? It is a trading card game. What I've always referred to as a mass market trading card game, but a trading card game that's a little more accessible.

Magic is an awesome game, but complicated. And so I made a simpler trading card game. And I first came of it back in 1998, and we're going to talk about that today. And it took me 28 years to get it made. So how did it take me 28 years? What exactly was I doing for 28 years? That is today's podcast.

Today's podcast is literally the history of me trying to get this made. So let's start from the very beginning. So magic comes out in 1993. I start working for magic part-time in 1994, doing freelance work. I start working full-time for magic in 1990. And then in 1998, I have the following idea. Often when I talk about Richard Garfield's inventing magic, I say there are three genius ideas,

what I call the golden trifecta. I talk about the color pie, which I love. I talk about the mana system, and I talk about the concept of the trading card game. And I spent a lot of time talking about the collar pie and some about the manned system. I talk less about the trading card game. I talk some, I guess.

But I really, really believe trading card games were awesome. But one of the things that dawned on me was that trading card games did cool things that I believed lots of players might enjoy. But some of the, like, magic, once again, magic best game in the world, super fun, but it's complicated. And my idea was, I think we could introduce trading card games. We were the trading card game company, right? We could introduce trading card games to a wider audience. That was my original idea. Like I was thinking about sort of the complexity of games.

and magic sits more on the complex side. What exactly is a simple trading card game? And once again, something that's fun and compelling, you know, a good game. And so the idea that I thought about is, so as I said to myself, okay, if I'm going to make magic, not magic, if I'm going to make a trading card game that's not magic, what are the things that I could pull out of magic to make it simpler? In the end, I sort of decided that what if it acts like a normal card game?

Like a card game you would go in any store and buy, Just think of your favorite card game you'd buy off the shelf at a store. In those games, you buy a game, they come with cards, you play the game, and you just have a game. You bought a game, you have a game. The only twist would be, like the idea is it's playable out of the box, there's no necessary deck building, because that's complicated. But what makes it a trading card game is that there are more cards than you get. That when you go to the store to buy the game, you get some of the cards, but there are more than you personally. get. You get enough to play with. The game is complete and you can play all by, you know,

like what you get is a full game that you can play. You never have to buy more cards. It's a complete and full game, much like any other card game you would buy. But if I go to my friend's house and I play, if I play mood swings in my house, it's a slightly different experience when I play at my friend's house. Not because the base game is any difference. It's the same game, but my friend just has some cards that I don't have. Probably there's some overlap. There's some cards to my friend's deck that I recognize that I have, but there's some cards I don't recognize. And the idea is every time you play a different version, the game is slightly different. But I really wanted all the fun parts that I liked about trading card games. I wanted the interactivity,

I wanted the card connection, I wanted the adaptability, I liked collecting and trading. I wanted all of that. I wanted a trading card game. I just wanted it a lot simpler. Okay, I am going to do an entire podcast about the design of the game. That's not today. Today's about getting it made, not about the design of it. I'll talk a little bit. In getting it made, there's a few things where I'll talk a little bit about

things I did when I was trying to get made. But the nuts and bolts, crunchy, how to make the design work, that's a different podcast. Okay, so, we started in 1998. So I invent this game. Then that summer,

in August of 1998, I was invited to be the guest of honor at Ropacan, which is like the largest like game convention in Finland. And so I mocked up my game. I literally hand wrote on cards. I had blank cards. I hand wrote on the cards using different color pens,

different card markers. And I play with it for the, I mean, Laura, Laura, who was not my wife at the time, was my fiancé. We were engaged to be married, but not married yet. She and I would play. She was my first playtest partner. And I think I had shown a couple people at work, but I really hadn't played with a lot of people.

And so me taking it to Ropacan was the first time I kind of played with the game with anybody. Obviously, it was rough in that. It was the early stages. So I go to Ropacon, I come back, and the first thing I do is I put it into our database so that I can make stickers out of it. Instead of having to handwrite everything, I now could print it on stickers. Because at the time, we're using sticker technology to print magic cards. So I take all my lessons for Robicon. I clean up some things, and I make my very first pitch back in 1998 to try to make mood swings.

And as I sort of said, I pitched it as a mass market trading card game. It's a trading card game for my wider audience. And the idea was very simple is you're going to sell less cards per person. It doesn't have quite the same business model of magic, only because magic is a lifestyle game, people who are going to play to spend a lot more money. My idea was we are selling a card game and that some people would want more cards and they can buy more cards and they will.

But some people could be happy buying one, they buy their cards and they're done. And the idea essentially was I think we would sell not as many cards as Magic would, but some cards and that we could make a game and that it just could be another trading card game for us. The response I got back in 1998 was

that we really weren't prepared at that time to do mass market. We were being sold only in local game stores, and we hadn't yet got mass accounts. Magic eventually would get mass accounts. We hadn't really got them back in 1998. So the answer I sort of got was, look, just not our specialty. Okay, 1999 in May of 1999, yes, in May of 1999, Wiz of the Coast buys the Gamekeeper.

So the Gamekeeper is a game store. a series of game stores. In fact, I used to work a Gamekeeper. When I first learned about magic, it was at a Gamekeeper. I was working at a Gamekeeper. Anyway, so we buy Gamekeeper, and they say to R&D, hey, one of the things we're looking for is it might be fun to have some games that we make specifically to sell in our game stores.

And so I, again, pitch mood swings. The problem this time is trading. card games just aren't, are a little more complicated to print. And they were looking to do this. I didn't even know where they were going to print it, but the needs they had just, they needed something simpler. They needed things that they didn't need things with lots of sheets and collation, and they just needed very simple things.

So it was a little bit too complex for what they were asking for. Brian Tinsman, by the way, would make the game called Curses that we would make for that project. And to this day, curses is still sold. You can still get it online and stuff. Okay, so later in 1998, and I say, 1999 in September, Wizards gets bought by Hasbro. And when that happens, we are told, oh, you know, we are not part of Hasbro. Hasbro has a whole R&D team. And Wizards were sort of designated the lifestyle gamer brands.

We were doing brands that were more, you know, people are going to spend a lot, a lot of time and money and energy. You know, these things that, this is a hobby, right? So they said, but if you have smaller games, you can pitch them to Hasbro. So I pitch mood swings. The problem there was that as soon as I said it was a trading card game, they're like, well, that's more complex than we want. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's like a simpler trading card game.

But just the idea that was a trading card game, they're like, well, Wizards does trading card games. And Wizards were like, well, you know, that is too simple for us. And Hazard was like, well, that's too complex for us. So in this sweet spot where neither side thought it was a good fit. So we didn't make it. Okay. So our next, so be aware, part of the storyline is I'm always working on this game.

If I jump around years, it's not as if I'm not working on the in-between years. I'm just talking times where I was trying something a little bit. different. I was constantly playing. I was adapting. And I was, Laura and I, for example, would play at lunch. One of the classic stories is, so Laura, this is 2000,

2000. Laura is pregnant with Rachel, my first, our first child. And we're trying to figure out what to name Rachel. So we agree on Rachel really fast, but we're unsure of her middle name. Laura wanted Diana, D-A-D-I-A-N-A, I wanted

Emily, E-M-I-L-L-Y. Both of us liked the other name, but each of us preferred our own name. And we noticed that they were both five letters. So we decided to play Moot-Sings for it. Because every day at lunch, we would go out to the restaurant for lunch, and then we would play a best two out of three game usually. Moot-sings is pretty fast, obviously. So we would play best two out of three.

And so we decided that for the next bunch of lunches, we would play. And the winner of that day's lunch would win. win the letter. And so Laura, so there's a one point where it was D-I-A-N

to E-M. I was behind. But luckily, I did pull it out. So Rachel's middle name is, in fact, Emily. Okay, now we jump to 2002. So I decide that I want to

try something a little different. I've been sort of spinning my wheels for a couple years. So I decide that I'm going to start a limited league in the office. So what I did was,

I made a new version of the cards. This time I added pop culture images to them. I wanted them to be a little more exciting. I wanted people to get excited. And, you know, the plain stickers weren't as exciting. So I put images on them. And then what I did is I made booster packs out of them. I think they were 15, I think they were 15 card booster packs, I believe.

But I made booster packs out of them. And the way it worked was when you played, you would find somebody else to play, you would shuffle your decks together, your packs together, so you now would have a deck of 30 cards, you would then play, I forget whether it's best two out of three or best three out of five, but you would play a match. And then the winner would get the points. But, and then at the end, you would just randomly deal out the decks, meaning that every time you played somebody, your deck got redistributed. So just what was going on, you kept having a lot of variety, because I would bring cards 1 through 15,

I would shuffle them in with the other players, which were cards 16 through 30, and then after the match was done, you would get half the cards from 1 through 30. So we did the league. The league went pretty well. A lot of R&D people played in it. And once again, I should stress,

the notes I got internally from R&D was people liked the game. The game was fun. My issue actually, during the entire, the entire 28 years of trying to make the game, it was never that people didn't think it was fun. Everybody thought it was fun. Arndy thought it was fun.

A lot of it had to do with trying to, is it the right game to make? Not is it a fun game. Okay. And I think I pitch again. The idea that I, the reason I did the Sealed League is I was trying to explain, hey, you know, there is a play pattern

that we could do. where people might buy more cards. That there is a sealed environment that people can enjoy and that I was just trying to demonstrate that, hey, you know, that there is a replay purchase model for some players. Some people would buy the basic game and that's it. They wouldn't buy anymore. But I think some people would buy more cards just to,

much like you buy an expansion or something, just get more cards. And some people might get involved in limited. The other thing that Moot Swings was good about is because it's a trading card game, it adapted itself. I would design different ways to play with it. There's the base way to play with it, but there are other formats to play with it.

In fact, one of the things I'm putting up on the website, the Moose Swings website, is going to be other ways to play. And I'll talk about that probably in my design podcast. Okay, so in 2005, I convinced the powers to be that we should do some focus testing with Moons Swings. So focus testing is when you bring an outside audience and you play with them, and you get feedback and learn what they like.

So we decided to do... They weren't sure what the card should look like. So we actually did an experiment where we made two different versions of the cards. One version was like the pop culture version that I had made the cards with before. We use different pop culture images, but we use pop culture images.

Because, I mean... Oh, from the very, very beginning, I should mention. Mood Swings, I wanted to have a very universal theme. I used emotions from the very, beginning. It was called mood swings. Every card represented an emotion or mood. That was true from day one, the very, very first playtesting. That was always true. Because I was trying to make a more sort of simpler, friendlier trading card game, I wanted something that was resonant and allowed you to have cards destroy their cards and things, but I didn't want the sense of violence.

And I wanted to feel more. And my hate getting rid of your curiosity felt like, oh, my hate doesn't like, you It felt, I don't know, less, I just wanted something that felt a little more, I don't know the right word for it, but a little softer in sort of what was happening. And I thought, I've always thought emotions were very resonant. My mom's a psychologist. I did a play in college called Lego My Ego. That was all about emotion. So, big fan of emotions.

Okay. So we do the focus testing. Oh, sorry. So one of them is pop culture images. The other one we test is we do actual photographs. So what we did is we took people from employees from Wizard of the Coast, and we had a photographer come in, and we took different pictures. In fact, the picture of love is Laura, my wife, with Sarah, my youngest daughter,

and Sarah's like one or something. So anyway, I think I was on anxiety. So we took a bunch of pictures, and we did focus testing. The focus testing went pretty well in the sense that people liked the game. The challenge, once again, One of the things that keeps popping up is that the business plan for this is a little bit fuzzy that, you know, it's something new. Obviously, what I'm pitching is, what if we make a trading card game that's a different kind of audience, not one that's a lifestyle, meaning they're going to buy less cards on average. And the idea is, is that, you know, does that make sense?

Is that a, and this is not a knock in any way against Wizards. Like, I don't know. I mean, we'll talk about when this game comes down. I'm doing something we've never done. Will it be successful? At the time of recording this, I actually don't know. I mean, I think it will. That's why I'm doing it.

That's why I've been trying to make it for 28 years. So I have faith it will be successful, but I don't know it will be successful. And one of the challenges along the way was that the thing that keeps sort of bumping into was, does this fit the, you know, is it the right product mix in whatever? So anyway, we do the focus testing. relatively well, but we still choose not to make it. So in 2007, I've been working on, I decided I just want to clean up the game and make the game the best version of the game I can.

I do a lot of work cleaning up templating. I work on power balance. I work on gameplay. I'm now back to the stickers. But I try to make the cleanest version of it just so I'm like, look, I don't want you to knock it because the game can't be the best it can be. I want the game very strong. And so in 2007, when I talked to the, you know, one of the, you know, one of the, you know,

Once again, I keep talking to different people. I'm just sort of keeping it as a faceless person I'm talking to, but there's different people I'm talking to. The feedback I get in 2007 is Wizards has decided to start focusing on its own brands and not make a lot of other games, but focus on the things that we do that, you know, at this point we have on Dungeon Dragon. So, you know, focus on our main brands. So in 2011, I find decide to adapt it.

So Moot Swins from the very beginning had been three. three color. The colors have been red, green, and blue. And I decide that if I'm going to get it made, I have to get it made through the lens of its support for magic. It's magic adjacent. So I turn it into a five-color game. And I adapt the color pie to it, meaning if something, you know, if a card bounces a card, it's in blue. If I make you discard a card, it's in black. Then I'm matching how the color pie mechanically works in magic. I'm lining that up. I also have three rarities, they go to four rarities. You know, I'm just

doing all I can. This is also the point originally you would draw seven cards and I'm convinced through doing playtest and talking with some different people that it's better if there's card draw involved. And so instead of drawing seven, you draw five,

then you draw one each time you lose. You still end up with seven cards. It just made it a little bit easier to play the early turns and there's a little bit of suspense. You didn't know everything up front. So there's some you could want to draw things. Drawing cards is fun. And so I spent a lot of time adapting.

In 2014, I make a version using magic art. Ethan Fletcher helps me make the frames. And so I make a version. This is the very, very early versions of the game, like the ones I'm hand-drawing. I had the dyes on it to represent the score. That idea was from the very beginning. When I was printing it on cards, a lot of times it had numbers.

And I went back to showing an actual dye. I remember reading that it's easier when trying to count things, having dyes are patterns that you can recognize and count, which is a little bit easier than numbers. Anyway, just the way the brain works. So I go back to showing it having dice on it. And then in 2016, as a separate project, I start working with Graham Hopkins, who came in third at the first great designer search,

who was working, I think, an arena at this point. Anyway, he and I start working to make a digital version of it as a proof of concept. So anyway, I start working with him to make that. Then another important thing is in December of 2016, a guy named Mark Hagen starts working in R&D, and he starts late in the year. And at the holiday party in December, I play movie. Moose swings with him. Why did I play moose swings with him? Because I played moose swings with everybody. And I mean everybody. Anybody that would play moose swings with me, I played moose swings with. My idea was,

I want to get this out there. The more people aware of it, the better. And I, I mean, when I say, I played with anybody that literally would play with me. I played probably with, I don't even think I'm exaggerating. Over 100, maybe 200. I mean, I played with lots of people. Everybody in R&D, I played with many people outside of R&D. The reason I bring Hagen up, so this is 2016, will become important, but I play with Hagen. The only thing that matters in 2016 is I play with Hagen. Okay, in 2017, R&D has a fair

where the idea is, if you have any cool ideas of new things to do for magic, show them off at the fair. So I've been working with Ethan Fleischer. We had been making some adjacent games, kind of games that were, use elements of magic, but were simpler games.

And so we take three of them. The game that Ethan made called Mana Clash, that was kind of like Yassie. You had dice that you rolled mana symbols with. And then you would cast cards out of your hand. It sort of taught you how to cast spells. We had a game called Rumble that was like war, but you were doing creature combat.

And we had mood swings. And so we pitched, at the fair, we pitched an idea called Stepping Stones. And the idea of stepping stones is these are games that are simpler than magic, but they introduce you to some element of magic. Oh, learn how creature combat works. Oh, learn how spellcasting works. Oh, learn how a trading card game and how the color pie works. Each of them was introducing something to you. So if you played the game first, it made it easier when you got to magic.

Okay. Obviously, there's a lot of things going on in the fair. Other things got picked, not stepping stones. 2018 Graham and I finish when I said Graham and I Graham was doing all the programming I mean I was helping and providing

the cards and images and you know I was and he and I were doing a lot of playtasting and I was giving notes and things but Graham did all the programming I was doing when I say he and I worked on it together I mean I did all the help he did all the programming

so we showed it off in 2018 I get a little bit of interest the biggest problem is once again no one knows quite what to do with it. And so people are interested, but no one, it goes nowhere. So in 2019, there's a contest.

The idea of the contest was so many people in Wizards have made really cool games. Maybe we should take a look at all the games that are being made internally and make one of them. And so, and I was perfect for this contest, right? They wanted a game that had been worked on. I'd been working on it for many years. Had it be employee. I'm an employee. I think it had to be something that could be done in digital.

I had just had proof of concept that could be done in digital. The challenge is, I think the deadline for turning in for this thing was, I think, like, September 1st. I learned of it on September 2nd. I literally learned of its existence a day after the deadline. So I missed the deadline. I did not turn it in. Mootswings did not get made through this contest. Okay, then we get to

2004. And during all this time, once again, I'm constantly tweaking with it. I'm constantly playing with people. But I will admit, I mean, I keep having new ideas. I keep pitching different ways to do mood swings, different ways to think of mood swings.

I've been doing a lot of trying to, here's how I could support magic. I mean, I was trying a lot of different approaches. I was running up against a way. wall. And I will admit, if you asked me in like 2003, if Moot Swings was ever going to get made, I might have said, I, I'm, you know, I might have been a little on the, a little dawn. I wasn't giving up, but I, it was looking

that good. I've been working on it for, you know, in 2024, I've been working on it for 26 years. But anyway, I get approached by Mark Hagen. So Mark Hagen, by the way, he started in 2016, in 2000, uh, when was it? 19, Mark starts the Secret Layer brand. The idea for those that don't know Secret Layer is, what if we sold stuff directly to the consumer? There's a lot of ideas that are really cool,

but in order to go through the store, the volume that we have to make in order to make it in the store because there's so many stores is really high. And the idea of Secret Layer is, maybe we can do some things that a much smaller group, like it can be successful with a much smaller group wanting to see it. We can do cool art and lots of neat and interesting things. So Hagan comes to me in 2024 and says, you know, SecretLair has been going really well.

They want to expand. They want to try some new things. So one of the things that they want to try is making a new game. But they don't just want to do anything. They're secret layer. They want to do something that's a little off the beaten path. And so they're interested in finding a game that is purposely kind of untested. And he said, remember that game we played back when I first started at the holiday party back in 2016,

eight years earlier, he goes, would you mind if we made that? 26 years in, would you mind if we made that? I said yes. And so it got on the schedule. I spent a good chunk of 2025 updating the game.

In the podcast where I talk about game design, that time period is really important. A lot of stuff happens there. I will talk about that in the game design podcast. But anyway, I work. on it. And then I have to hand it off in the summer of 2025. It goes to editing. My crocheting is my editor. And I worked with creative to get images for it. Ari Zerilnik and Matt Danner were my art team and we decided that we would use magic art,

but we'd use sketches, kind of show like, it's a work in progress at Wither. something we've been working on, seeing behind the scenes. Corey is made my sort of, I don't know, play designer. I'll get more into that when we get into a Cory Bowen, who's done lots of with magic design. But anyway, it gets handed off. Then Kobe Nichols does the frames, and we spend a lot of time. And then, in early 2016, we got to announce

the Magicon Las Vegas schedule in which there's a redacted event in which you could come play with a new game with me and at the time we didn't say what it was although a lot of you did guess mood swings because I have literally been talking about mood swings for example I've mentioned mood swings on this podcast many times

long before I knew it was ever actually going to get printed so we announced that and then the big idea was we were going to show off for the very first time at Las Vegas Magicon Now, as I recorded this, Las Vegas Magicon has not happened yet. I'm hoping things go wonderfully at Las Vegas MagicCon. But the idea is that we're going to introduce it for the first time,

and people will have a chance to play it. The product is being sold on Secret Later. That's who's making it. And it will come out on June 1st. So if any of this sounds interesting, like I said, there'll be a separate podcast talking all about the gameplay. I will say, it's just sort of a wrap-up today. I normally, when I work on Magic,

I make something and then three years later I've had a few things that maybe were four or five years later maybe a few unsets that took seven years I'm used to making something and it taking time to come out that is the normal part of my jet

but I mean the reason I didn't give up on this is I really really really to the core of my soul thought it was a good idea I just could not give up on it and obviously it's this tale tells I'm stubborn

because there's all sorts Like, I got told no so many different times. But every time I got told no, the interesting thing is, nobody ever said, I don't think this is good. Nobody ever said that to me. In fact, the opposite was always, I do think this is a good game, but. And so I never gave up, and I kept trying. And like I said, I, you know, we talk a lot about iteration, right?

That one of the things that you do in games, there's an iteration loop where you make something, you playtest it, you get feedback, and you make changes. Well, I've been iterating. There's no game in my life that I've ever iterated on more than this particular game. Obviously, I make a lot of magic. But anyway, I just, I mean, I'm, I hope if this, it all excites you. And like I said, I will do a separate podcast talking about through actual gameplay.

I do think this is a product that, the joke I make is when Richard first, when Richard met Peter Ackeson for the first time, because Richard was pitching a game called Robo Rally. Peter said they can't make it too expensive. Richard says to Peter, what kind of game do you want? And Peter says to him, I want a game you can play in between D&D sessions.

So my pitch of this game has always been I want to make a game that you can play in between magic sessions. The thing about Moose Swings is you can play with two to four players. A two-person game is like five to ten minutes. Even a four-player game is like 15 to 20 minutes. It's pretty fast.

It's faster than magic. And anyway, that is the history. That is the 28-year history of trying to get mood swings from an idea in my brain to cards printed on paper. And I'm so excited it's finally happening. In fact, it's kind of hard to believe. Part of me is still a little bit in denial. But anyway, that, my friends, is the history of mood swings.

And so June 1st, you too could join in and be part of the... You two could play the game on... June 1st. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed my story, but I'm at work, so we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work, so instead of talking magic, it's time to me to make it magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.